Here are some comments regarding the “Finland” country report by Michael Weltin. I will concentrate on the first part only. The interview part of the paper requires such detailed technical expertise that I am not capable of commenting.

My main point is that the description of the Finnish political system in the paper is by and large correct but clearly outdated. I understand that it is difficult to get recent material about the Finnish system in English or in German. The main source in the paper is David Arter’s book “Politics and Policy-Making in Finland”. This is a good book but, unfortunately, outdated. A much more up-to-date source would be David’s more recent book “Scandinavian Politics today” (1999, Manchester University Press).

The major change in the Finnish political system since the early 1980’s has been a gradual shift of power away from the president to the government and to the parliament. There have been several changes in the Finnish constitution from early 1980’s to this year. Finally, 1 March 2000 the totally new constitution came into force. (See: http://www.om.fi/constitution/index.htm). I think that the paper puts way too much emphasis on the president and, consequently, gives a misleading view of the political system.